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By Lisa Romano
 New England is a historical kind of place. Unlike other parts of the country, New Englanders can often trace their family roots far back to the original settlement of the region. Charles Fisher, of Southampton, traces his ancestors back centuries, to the Sheldons of Southampton. The Sheldons arrived in Massachusetts in the early 18th century, settling in initially in Northampton. Some of the family members then moved to Southampton in 1732, onto a 90 acre parcel of land granted from the king of England. They built a traditional New England salt box house (est. 1768), cleared the land for their farm, and eventually passed the property down the generations to children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on, until 1931, when Charles Fisher was born, the Southampton homestead his birthplace.
At that time, Charlie’s grandmother was owner of the property, and his family was living with her while she got over an illness. Upon her recovery, Charlie’s family moved with him and his siblings to Springfield, where he spent most of his childhood, visiting his grandmother in Southampton often.
In 1939, Charlie’s grandmother, a widow, decided that keeping up the house and property was just too much for her to handle and she sold the property, the first time it had left the family. For the next 40 years, while Charlie’s ancestral home was under different ownership, Charlie grew up, married, spent 15 years logging and milling in western Massachusetts for his father-in-law’s small mill, and took up the hobby of restoring antique furniture. Taking his hobby a step further, he and his wife bought and restored two 18th century houses in Southampton, at the same time Charlie was turning his hobby into a career.
 In 1977, Charlie got a call from the daughter of the owner of his birthplace. The property was about to go up for sale and, knowing it was his ancestral home, and that Charlie and his wife had an interest in restoring old homes, she was calling to offer Charlie and his wife the first opportunity to buy back the property, before putting it on the market. “It was hard to leave the house we were in that we had just finished restoring,” says Charlie, “but I talked it over with my wife and we decided we just couldn’t turn down the opportunity to get the family home back.”
So, in 1977 Charlie and his now late wife, Shirley, moved back to the homestead, gearing up to restore their third 18th century home. Amazingly, the house and much of the property were still intact, nearly exactly as they had been when they were originally settled, two and a half centuries earlier. Like many historic deeds, the deed to the land that had been passed down the generations was vague, reading “all my land” rather than a precise accounting of exactly what land was owned. While it was known that some of the land had been sold off before his grandmother acquired it, it wasn’t until Charlie was preparing to purchase the property that it became clear exactly what “all my land” included, in this case 55 acres of old field woods and wetlands, most contiguous, some landlocked by other properties  Since moving back to the homestead, Charlie has completely restored the house and it is now simply gorgeous. His career as an antiques dealer and restorer allowed him to furnish the home nearly entirely with antiques. “I’ve tried to use mostly 18th century antiques, so that it matches the house,” explains Charlie, and he’s done a fine job. “Some people tell me it’s like living in a museum,” he says, “but you just get used to it.” And the home does have a museum-like quality, accented with antique dolls that his wife collected and old-fashioned brass and iron cookware decorating the old fireplaces.
The western Massachusetts landscape has been progressively divided into smaller and smaller parcels. As land was passed down the generations, it was often divided among siblings, each parcel getting smaller as it went. The parcelization of the New England landscape often results in habitats that are disconnected, broken up by parcels that have been developed. That Charlie was not only able to return to his ancestral home but that so much of the land remained intact across so many generations is unusual. “I’d really don’t want this land to be sold or developed,” says Charlie, “though,” he acknowledges, “it’s not always easy to keep it.” Recently, Southampton changed its property tax laws, deciding to tax land based on its road frontage, of which Charlie has a lot. Though he appealed to the town, noting that much of his property is unsuitable for development, being wetland, Southampton declined to give him an exception, raising his taxes significantly. But Charlie’s a good planner and says if you are creative and do your research, you can often find ways to manage.
In order to help him hold onto his land, Charlie recently enrolled in Massachusetts’ Chapter 61, a current use tax program for timberland, under which his land is assessed at its value as a timberland rather than at its “highest and best use” (i.e. its value if it were to be developed). In exchange for having a management plan for his property written up by a licensed forester and for periodically performing active management as recommended in the management plan, Charlie’s property taxes will be based on the value of timber grown, not on the potential developable value of the land. Timber values are much smaller than development potential, so the effect on his property tax bill will be significant. Most states in the country have some version of this sort of program, often for working farmland, timberland, and occasionally for simply having open space (in Massachusetts, the program for agriculture is Chapter 61A and for open space is Chapter 61B; more info can be found at http://www.masswoods.net/index.php/landowner-programs/ch61programs). Charlie is using the program just as it was intended, to ease his tax burden so that he doesn’t have to sell the land for development. It’s a good, though not permanent, conservation tool.
“I’m hoping to be able to keep this house and property in my family,” says Charlie, though for the time being he’s unsure who in his family might be interested in inheriting it. In the meantime, it’s important to him to do what he can to keep the land out of developers’ hand, and says being in Chapter 61 will be a big help. He plans to look into other conservation opportunities that may be more permanent than Chapter 61, especially if participation may further ease the financial burden of owning a lot of land.
In the meantime, Charlie has been having fun with his woods. He recently bought a portable mill so that he can mill the trees that have fallen down, and he’s put a lot of energy into landscaping around the house. Though he’s had some health problems recently, he seems to be going strong. His mother, well into her 90s, lives independently on a couple acres abutting Charlie’s property. If he’s anything like his mother, Charlie will be around for some time to come. And he hopes he will be, so he can continue to steward his family land and simply enjoy the decades of work he’s put into restoring the old homestead.
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